World Wildlife Fund - Australia
THE 2024 THREATENED SPECIES REPORT CARD
4 September 2024
*SELECTIVE EXCERPTS*
In September 2022, WWF-Australia launched its first Threatened Species Report Card, which provided a simple but scientifically robust way to track and communicate Australia’s progress in recovering our threatened species.
The methods behind the report card were developed in collaboration with conservation scientists from the University of Queensland. After the 2022 launch, the methods were improved through a peer review process, and published as a scientific paper in an international journal (Wardet al. 2024).
We have now refreshed the report card grades with 2024 data and have compared them with the 2022 results outlined in the scientific paper.
WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE OUR 2022 REPORT CARD?*
• 163 species have been newly listed as threatened
• 40 species have had their threatened status upgraded, e.g., from Vulnerable to Endangered
• 3 species have had a genuine improvement in their threat status, because the rate of their decline has slowed or stopped. These are:
o The Red Knot (Calidris canutus) which moved from Endangered to Vulnerable
o The Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris), which moved from Critically Endangered to Vulnerable
o The Northern Siberian Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica menzbieri), which moved from Critically Endangered to Endangered
• There have been no new extinction listings since our 2022 Report Card. However, 15 species have been listed as extinct or extinct in the wild in the last 10 years.
*Includes listing changes between 8 March 2022 and 30 June 2024.
GRADING
We calculated a score between 0 and 1 for each indicator, where 1 is the ideal scenario. We then assigned grades using equal intervals, where:
• an A grade is greater than 0.83,
• a B grade is 0.67 to 0.82,
• a C grade is 0.5 to 0.66,
• a D grade is 0.33 to 0.49,
• an E grade is from 0.17 to 0.32, and
• an F grade is less than 0.16.
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As the reader will observe, in this report Australia received a shockingly bad overall assessment:
Funding - FAIL/F Grade
Recovery Plans - FAIL/ F Grade
Protection - LOW PASS/ C Grade
Threat Status Improvement - FAIL/ F Grade
Persistence - SECOND CLASS PASS/ B Grade
Full WWF The 2024 Threatened Species Report Card (released September 2024) can be read & downloaded at:
